Thursday

Dec 6, 2018 at 9:00 PM

Legacies received a visit from a Vampire Diaries veteran this week after a necromancer raised Jo Laughlin (Jodi Lyn O'Keefe) from the dead in yet another attempt to swipe that mysterious knife from Alaric's (Matt Davis) possession. Things took an emotional turn pretty quickly, as you'd imagine they would when the biological mother the twins had never met turned up on their doorstep. (Side note: Can I ask who decided to bury Jo in her bloody wedding dress? Because that's just rude.)

Jo spent most of her undead time bonding with her daughter Josie (Kaylee Bryant) since her other daughter, Lizzie (Jenny Boyd), pretty much refused to have anything to do with her on account she has such a strong bond with her surrogate mother, Caroline (Candice King). Though the girls did end up having to siphon the magic out of Jo to return her to the grave, both girls got to have a parting moment with the woman who would have been their mother had she lived.

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TV Guide spoke to showrunner Julie Plec about where Josie and Lizzie are headed next after that emotional goodbye, Landon's mysterious origins, and the love hexagon that is currently tangling all our favorite Legacies characters up together. Keep reading to see what she had to say!

This was a big episode for Josie. Are we going to see a change in her moving forward as she starts to feel more independent?Julie Plec: The girls spend the next couple episodes away visiting their mother because after this they actually need to go spend some quality time with Caroline. When they get back in the new year, we are really going to start exploring the different levels of their dynamic with each other and their individual dynamic in terms of Josie's co-dependence, her confidence [and] living in Lizzie's shadow. And we're really going to see the beginning of a nice arc where she starts to realize that it's OK to step outside that shadow and to step into her own light. We actually have a whole episode about it that has songs in Episode 11!

Am I finally getting my Vampire Diaries musical? Is that what I'm hearing? Plec: Basically [laughs]. It's a talent show episode! There's a lot of fun that we have there, and Josie's the real shining star of that episode.

In light of that, how is Lizzie going to react to Josie gaining a little independence? Plec: Lizzie is shocked and chagrinned at the blossoming of her sister. On one hand, she supports it entirely, but on the other hand, she's entirely confused by it. She never put two seconds of thought into whether Josie was a blooming flower or a shrinking violet, so this is all new information to her, and she is trying to keep up.

How did finally meeting their biological mom change the trajectory of both Lizzie and Josie's storylines moving forward?Plec: I think that it just gave them each a glimpse into the kind of person that they want to be. The nice words she said to them at the end about Lizzie having a big heart and Josie, it's OK to do things for yourself -- those are words that they needed to hear, even if they didn't' realize it. I think it'll impact them moving forward, definitely.

Do you think Alaric got a sense of closure with Jo? Plec: I think Alaric will feel he has a sense of closure when he chops the necromancer up into 800 little pieces and feeds him to the fish. Until then, I'd say he's going to be a little bit unhinged.

The necromancer was such a hilarious villain to see pop up at the end there.Plec: Oh, just you wait. He remains hilarious all the way through the next episode.

These kids all seem to be tangled in kind of a love hexagon at this point. Are we going to see some of those crushes or relationships get resolved or does it just get more tangled from here?Plec: It's just going to get more tangled overall. I think the fun of this show about these kids is that I was never in the business of epic love when I was 15 and 16 -- I was still trying to figure out who and what I wanted, and that's what a lot of these kids are going to go through. Obviously we have a really deep connection between Landon (Aria Shahghasemi) and Hope (Danielle Rose Russell) that is worth fighting for, and I think everybody else is just feeling each other out and trying to deal with hormones and sexuality and relationships and all those things that you go through when you're a teenager.

After seeing this new side to Penelope (Lulu Antariksa), I feel like I have to like her now. Should I?Plec: No one has to like Penelope, but you secretly kind of have to love Penelope even though she is often the most evil one in the room.

We got a little hint about Caroline's Gemini mission this episode. Will that secret about the Gemini merge continue to play a role in the twins' storyline this year? Plec: Yeah, the existence of that secret will be part of the narrative for the whole season. I like the idea that people who've never seen The Vampire Diaries don't know what that is and are going to have to keep up and watch as we fully reveal it to them, but people that do know what the secret is can have fun seeing if and when and how it comes out.

Does this potentially leave room for Caroline to show up someday? Plec: We can only hope.

We're still in the dark about what exactly Landon is, so when can we expect to start getting clues about that and his ties to Malivore? Plec: We will be launching into more about Landon when we return from our winter hiatus with a huge, huge reveal episode. The next two episodes -- the one that takes us to break and the one that brings us back -- give us a lot of answers to the questions we've been asking and, of course, introduces a bunch of more questions.

In light of Hope's feelings for Landon, should we expect her to have a positive or negative reaction to these revelations? Plec: Even the normally unflappable Hope Mikaelson is going to be given some pause.

Rafael (Peyton Alex Smith) and Hope got to a nice sort of truce in this episode, so what does their dynamic look like moving forward? Plec: They have kind of found each other, two people who don't have a lot of friends, who are both collectively missing the one friend that they share. So we'll be able to see a bond form there that will kind of keep the sheets warm -- the non-romantic sheets warm -- in Landon's absence.

Legacies airs Thursdays at 9/8c on The CW.

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(Full Disclosure: TV Guide is owned by CBS, one of The CW's parent companies).

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